The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday designated a pair of widely used industrial chemicals as hazardous substances under the country’s Superfund program, accelerating a crackdown on toxic compounds known as “forever chemicals.”
The rule will require companies to report leaks of two of the most commonly used per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and help pay to clean up existing contamination.
The EPA separately last week announced its first-ever drinking water standards to guard against PFAS pollution.
The new rule targets contamination from two PFAS known as PFOA and PFOS.
Good! And these substances are found in small quantities almost everywhere, including people’s bodies. We’re now hazardous waste sites, so are the companies that produced these compounds going to pay to clean us up?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412023003069?via%3Dihub
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33982557/
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/health-effects/us-population.html
something something … but that’s not how unfettered capitalism works!
Has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism. Just look at what the absolute fuck the USSR did. Or China now.
China of today is capitalist in the same way the USA is, with minor differences. Major corporations owning almost everything with government backing and influence.
Same with Russia. How else would Putin’s oligarchs survive if he didn’t allow them to continue to buy up every formerly state-owned business?
No, they are too busy researching the next dangerous chemical that can help boost their profit margins to new heights.
A lot of plastics have PFAS in them and I don’t think it’s likely they’ll be rushing to remove them. I wonder how this is going to play out.